We Absorb Our Family Story

A few years ago, Alice Collins Plebuch decided to take one of those DNA tests which show your ancestry. She had always believed herself to be of Irish descent and her family fully identified as Irish-American Catholics, so she was disturbed and flummoxed when half of her DNA came back as being European Jewish, Middle Eastern and Eastern European. (read here).

And so, Alice began a journey to find out the real story of one-half of her origins.

As it turned out, to make a long story short, Alice's father Jim Collins, who had always been very religious and regarded himself as being an Irish-American, and who'd even had a Irish-style wake when he died, had been mistakenly given after his birth, to the Irish-American couple that he grew up to regard as his parents. His real parents were actually Ashkenazi Jewish-Americans. The Irish couple's own child had been given to the Jewish family and this child had been named, Phillip Benson.

Phillip Benson, like Alice's father, was born at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx and he had been brought up and married into the Jewish community. Someone it seems, mixed the children up and as the Washington Post stated, “Somehow, a Jewish child had gone home with an Irish family, and an Irish child had gone home with a Jewish family and the child who was supposed to be Philip Benson had instead become Jim Collins.”

Which just goes to show how most of us simply take on and adsorb the beliefs of our immediate family and surrounding culture, despite the origins of our DNA. 

The Parliament of Our Brain and Free Will

According to the work of neuroscience, our sense of self is simply an illusion. A trick of the brain. Whilst many of us believe we have a single integrated identity and free will, in reality, our brain is creating this hallucination.

Our brains, according to David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, are more like a "neural parliament", with different parts of the brain fighting it out in an attempt to control decisions.

Our sense of reality is constructed by the brain, by many unconscious processes and our sense of who we are is based on a story we tell ourselves, based on distorted and selective past memories.

Brains are locked inside the darkness of our skull and they depend on the information streamed by our senses. The brain then makes patterns and creates a picture of reality. But our response to this reality may not be simple. For example, I might see a delicious cheesecake in front of me and the parts of my brain which register hunger and pleasure might want it. Another part of my brain might be thinking about how I need to lose weight and that the ingredients in the cheesecake might not be good for my health. If I'm feeling particularly hungry or stressed, then the hypothalamus, an area of the brain in charge of the stress response and hunger may well prove to be dominant over the other parts urging me to control myself.

Consider also how a bottle of hand sanitizer can cause most of us to become more conservative. In general, conservatives have a stronger disgust reaction. According to research in the journal Psychological Science, reminders of cleanliness changes peoples social attitudes. Simply placing a bottle of hand sanitizer next to people answering a questionnaire causes respondents to answer more conservatively.  

Books To Read

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, is a social psychology book by Jonathan Haidt, in which the author describes human morality as it relates to politics and religion.

Poetical Egalitarians: Coleridge and Southey

The renown British poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, in 1794, came up with a plan to create a utopian egalitarian community based on two principles: "Pantisocracy" (meaning government by all) and "Aspheterism" (meaning general ownership of property). The foundation of their idea came from from Plato's ideal commonwealth.

In this new society, the two men wanted to eliminate servitude and oppression. Integral to this vision was the precept of no personal property so that people would be governed by the “dictates of rational benevolence.”

Initially, Coleridge and Southey planned to build the community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in the United States; then later, the idea of establishing a less ambitious community in Wales was put forward.

However, as neither Coleridge or Southey had much money with which to build their utopia, they had hopes that wealthier immigrants who would join the community, would be willing to finance it.

Pantisocracy as dreamt of by Coleridge and Southey, never came about, as the plans were scuttled by financial difficulties and the loss of interest in the idea by potential community citizens.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Robert Southey

63 Light Years Away: It Rains Glass

The planet called HD 189733b is a beautiful azure blue. But this planet is 63 light years away and the atmosphere is a scorching 1,000C. And it rains glass there.....but, sideways, mind you, because of the 7,000km-per-hour winds. So it's not exactly a relaxing scene, even if you could get there.

This huge gas giant is located 600 trillion kilometres from Earth, but its environment would not be compatible with life, with its extremely hot glass rain and scorching temperatures. So essentially, it's a right deadly place.

Located in the constellation Vulpecula in the northern sky - also known as the little fox, this planet, like Earth, looks blue and for similar reasons. However, while Earth looks blue because the blue spectrum of the Sun's light is scattered about by air molecules, on this planet, the glassy silicate particles scatter the blue light spectrum.

Look Left and Right

Conservatives are often called right-wing and liberals left-wing and these different groups tend to see the world differently and to form political sects which disparage and despise each other. But we would be better served if we got out of our echo chambers and started to listen to each other. Here's why:

As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. So if we concede that while the democratic system is a slow-moving beast, it is also a system which allows its citizens to express their opinions about the country and how it is being run. This is the public sphere and the discussion and debate which goes on here should help us to identify potential societal problems, work through issues and come to a workable compromise.

Now, take a contentious and explosive matter like immigration, which for many wealthy and successful western democracies, is a salient and fraught matter. Left-wingers will tend to emphasise issues like human rights and the belief that all lives are equally valuable. These, are undoubtedly important and weighty considerations.

Right-wingers, however, are often concerned by how our society will change with immigration and this is very important too. For example, some ethnic and religious groups may have a lot of children, and so, after a number of years, some particular groups of people may have the numbers and the ability to affect political policy toward certain directions. This may matter or it may not. But we need to listen closely to all voices and not just dismiss those that we see as the opposition.

Also highly relevant here is the importance of free speech in a democracy and the recognition that your right to free speech is always constrained by the rights of others, as other people also have the right not to endure vilification, hate and harm. And genuinely embracing free speech doesn't mean that you only support the concept when the speech happens to coincide with your point of view.

For example, in Australia, the left tends to respond in outrage when limits to immigration may be mentioned, and so, interesting and important arguments about the population carrying capacity of the land and the planet are also shut down. The left often wants to talk about the environment but with critical exclusions. How the changing ethnic and religious make-up of the country may modify what we value about our country, also, shouldn't be shut down and crushed. These matters are important to us all and we should take care not to stymie and stunt the discussion.

Australia's right-wing is also guilty of the same blinkered views and obstructions; like when a certain journalist was sacked after an intensive campaign from the right-wing, who were outraged about his "offensive" comments about Anzac Day. The interesting thing, however, is that many academic historians would agree with that SBS journalist's views, as they fitted the facts and evidence. But Anzac Day has become like a religion on the right in Australia and any criticism is seen as blasphemy. The real historical story is covered up and kept like a simple fairy tale and whilst this feeds the monster of nationalism, it also dumbs us down as a nation.

One other thing to mention is that breaking down the wall of our information and group silos does not mean that we simply become centrists, as this way of thinking is too simple and it's based on the fallacy called argumentum ad temperantiam, where you take the middle ground, or a false compromise. What you need to do is listen to the discussion and learn as much as you can. And each issue should be judged on its merits.

So whilst your right or left wing echo-chamber may be comfortable and reassuring, it is also stunting your brain and destroying democracy. 

Hitler Was on Drugs

Adolf Hitler the leader of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, is known for bringing about WW11 and for his genocide of the Jewish people. Hitler, however, in the beginning at least, had a desire to become an artist; his paintings are rather good, and he was a practising vegetarian.

Mother Mary with the Holy Child Jesus Christ, 1913, Adolf Hitler

There are reports that Hitler became a vegetarian because of concerns for animal cruelty. Although he may have been inspired by other reasons too, it is hard to square the idea of Hitler as caring about the abuse of animals, with the murderous dictator that he became. A 1937 article in The New York Times, also noted that Hitler didn't drink or smoke and that he avoided any kind of meat.

Things changed. Hitler went from a person who would try to dissuade others from eating meat by telling them graphic accounts about how animals are killed, to a person who was addicted to drugs, such as amphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, and cocaine and injected animal hormones.

The German writer Norman Ohler reveals the astonishing tale of drug use by Hitler and the Third Reich and how the Nazi armies carried out the "Blitzkrieg" invasions of Poland and France while high on, Pervitin, which was basically crystal meth.

It was Hitler's personal physician, Dr Morell, who would inject Hitler with an opiate drug, which is very close to heroin (now called oxycodone), three times a day and prescribed him high-grade cocaine to be taken twice a day. But the drug producing factories were bombed and the drug supplies began to run out. Whether the drooling, stumbling and crazy acting Hitler was suffering from Parkinson’s disease or in withdrawal, or both, at the war's end, before his suicide, we cannot be certain.

And all this when we thought that the Nazi's couldn't get any more sinister and despicable.

Books To Read

Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, by Norman Ohler

Free Vegies and Fertilizer

If you are are a frugal and thrifty type you will love the following suggestions:

Grow Bok Choy or Celery from Scraps

If the bok choy in your fridge has some yellowed leaves at the bottom, don't throw it away, because it's ready to grow. First, cut the stems of the vegetable where the stems meet the leaves. Or in other words, 2 inches from the bottom up. Use the good leaves in your cooking.

Take the bottom of the bok choy and put it into a bowl with at least 2cm of water. The part where the leaves used to be should be facing up.

Place the container with the bok choy in direct sunlight and then, simply change the water in the container every day.

After some days roots should appear, and then, you can plant your bok choy in a pot or in the ground. Cover the roots well and water the plant whenever the soil becomes dry.

As the plant grows you can cut leaves from the outside and the plant will continue growing and producing.

Carrot Tops For Salad Greens

Place carrot tops in a bowl with water and put them in a well-lit room. After the green tops grow you can cut them off and use in salad or cooking.

Other vegetables which can be grown from scraps are Cos lettuce and cabbage which can grow roots if the bottom is placed in a bowl of water. After roots appear, plant in a pot or in the ground.

Fertilising with human urine

There is no need to purchase costly fertilizers for your plants as you can use your own urine. And importantly, fresh human urine is sterile and bacteria free. Our urine contains Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K) and other trace micro-nutrients.

After you collect your urine add some water, about 5 times as much water as urine. Then simply apply the liquid to the soil around the plant.

No more chemical fertilizers!

The Jesus Triumvirate

Milton Rokeach was a social psychologist who published a book in 1964, about the experiment he conducted on a group of three patients with paranoid schizophrenia, at Ypsilanti State Hospital, in Michigan USA.

by Caravaggio

Whilst working at the psychiatric facility, Rokeach found that three male patients, all with paranoid schizophrenia, all believed that they were Jesus Christ. So Rokeach brought the men together, forcing them to confront their conflicting claims.

At first, the three men fought with each other, with one man claiming that, "You oughta worship me" and another countering "I will not worship you!" and the third insisting "....I am the Good Lord".

The three men continued over time to debate, argue and fight, but only one of them slightly capitulated and asked to be called a different name, in this case, "Dr Righteous Idealed Dung".

Despite Rokeach manipulating these patients and their delusions in various ways, in an attempt to get them to change their beliefs, the patients' continued to strongly believe in their delusions. As explanations for the existence of two other people claiming to be Jesus, they variously claimed that the others were "crazy" or "duped"; had a mental disability, were dead and being operated by machines.

At the end of the 1984 edition of the book, Milton Rokeach wrote, "I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere round the clock with their daily lives".

Henry Ford's Unhappy Jungle City

Henry Ford is famous for selling millions of cars, especially the affordable Model T produced by assembly line manufacturing. He paid his workers well and he helped create a middle class in America.

Henry Ford on the cover of Time magazine, January 14, 1935

 As a highly successful man of business, Henry Ford's name demands a great deal of respect, but Ford had some crazy ideas too, like creating a prefabricated, industrial town in the Amazon Rainforest, called Fordlândia.

After negotiating a special deal with the Brazilian government in 1928,  Henry Ford began to steam ahead with the creation of the world’s largest rubber plantation, set deep in the Amazon forest.

The motivation behind Henry Ford's Amazon industrial town, was an attempt to undercut Asian rubber growers, who had a monopoly on producing rubber and who drove the prices sky-high. So Ford spent a truckload of money (excuse the pun) and built houses, relocated workers and employed indigenous people to work at Fordlândia. But few of his plans worked out as he hoped.

Ford didn't consult a specialist about growing the rubber trees and most of the trees died from blight Then he spent a heap of money building swimming pools, tennis courts, and shops for his workers, but he soon faced malaria, riots and cultural clashes.

Ford was a control-freak. He expected his workers to work hard, long hours in the relentless jungle heat. And then, he tried to impose a kind of "cultural imperialism" on these workers during their time off. They had to eat at the canteen, which only served bland food, which the workers had to pay for.

Ruins of Fordlândia, circa 2005.

For entertainment, Ford provided English only singing performances and compulsory square dances, at which alcohol was banned. In trying to bend the jungle to his will and forcibly shape his workers free time and culture, Ford was not successful. His rubber plants died and his workers were unhappy and rioted.

The main warehouse at Fordlandia

After losing $20 million on his Amazon venture (over $200 million in today's dollars) Ford sold Fordlândia for $250,000. Today Fordlândia lays crumbling into ruins and deserted in the Amazon jungle.

Frankenstein, Anarchism and Free Love

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), the author of the gothic, horror novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), was the daughter of radical, celebrated and interesting parents.

Mary Shelley

Mary's mother was the philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). A book which argued that women were not inferior to men; that they only needed educational opportunities.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft objected to the way that society demanded that girls be brought up, as empty-headed flirts, who were only interested in trivialities; she believed this was morally depraved. She saw women as being trapped by their lack of serious education and training, in a life that was all about appearances.

Mary's mother, also, did not believe in marriage, which was a fairly scandalous notion in 1793, when at age 34, she fell in love with an American named Gilbert Imlay, whom she'd met during the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft became pregnant and gave birth to a girl named, Fanny. However, when the child was 4 months old, Gilbert left on a business trip and never came back.

Sadly, after her death, Wollstonecraft's very important and groundbreaking ideas were overshadowed by her reputation as a fallen woman.

William Godwin

Mary's father was also an important philosopher named William Godwin. He was one of the founders of the still highly relevant philosophy of Utilitarianism and a supporter of Anarchism. Godwin, like Wollstonecraft, believed that marriage was "an affair of property" and an act of tyranny and degradation. Mary's parents, however, did go against their own beliefs, as they did marry, as they did not want to harm the future prospects of their daughter.

Going against their principals went to waste for Mary's parents, as later, while still a teenager, Mary eloped with the already married Romantic poet and philosopher, Percy Bysshe Shelley. But she did marry Shelley and she went on to write the hugely important and thought-provoking novel, Frankenstein.

Books To Read

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley.

The Vegetarian Festival of Blood. Warning!

In Thailand, an interesting and yet gruesome, vegetarian, nine-day Taoist celebration is held beginning on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar.  The festival begins, near various waterways, with an invitation to the Nine Emperor Gods to come into the temple where they are to be worshipped for nine days. Devotees of the religion also believe that from their worship of these gods, they will gain wealth and longevity.

Worshippers at the Nine Emperor Gods Festival in Thailand, perform lion and dragon dances as they make their way to the water. Those following, are dressed in white and carrying sedan chairs, with statues of the gods and the sacred urn, which they sway about to symbolise the presence of divine forces.

It is traditional in Thailand to eat vegetarian meals and to recite prayers. Some devotees, however, also perform ritualised mutilation upon themselves and others, which involves such actions as impaling knives or other implements through cheeks, arms, face, legs, back etc.; partial skinning (the skin is not removed, just cut and flipped over); slashing of limbs, chest, stomach and especially tongue with swords, axes and knives; bloodletting; removal of tissue (normally limited to cysts) and intentionally wrapping or standing near firecrackers as they are lit.

The gods are sent back to heaven on the 9th day.


Books To Read

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, by Michael Shermer, Stephen Jay Gould (Foreword)

Surprising Treasure Finds

A Van Gogh

A retired couple living in suburban Milwaukee in 1991, USA, had a painting hanging on the wall of their home which had been in the family for about 30 years. When John Kuhn, a commercial real estate agent and part-time art prospector visited the couple, he identified the painting as looking very much like a Van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh in 1873

The couple who had inherited the painting, from a relative who had emigrated from Switzerland after the start of World War II, merely laughed at Khun's suggestion. However, the painting was sent to Amsterdam to be examined and the Rijksmuseum confirmed the work as being an original Van Gogh and called the painting "Still Life With Flowers".

At auction, the artwork inspired lively bidding and sold for a record $1.43 million. This is pretty sad when you consider that Van Gogh only sold one painting during his life.

Gold Bars and Ingots

A man inherited a house from a relative in the town of Evreux in Normandy, France and discovered 100kg of gold coins, bars and ingots, which had been hidden about the house. Such as, under the laundry, in cupboards, under chairs, in glass jars, in fact, all over the place. The man sold the lot for $3.7 million, but he will have to pay a 45% inheritance tax on the gold, and probably, three years of back taxes.

Anglo-Saxon Treasures

Hoard of Angl-Saxon rings

A man and his son were digging a hole for a fence post at their home in Acomb, Yorkshire, when they noticed something green almost covered by the dirt. Digging the article up, they soon found that they were holding a copper pot, which had turned green from the soil moisture. And inside that pot, was a collection of Anglo-Saxon jewellery, featuring gold filigree and precious stones like garnets, which were 1400 years old.

The man and his son soon found out that the Treasure Act 1996 stipulates that the finder must offer the item for sale to a museum, at a price set by an independent board of antiquities expert, known as the Treasure Valuation Committee. The treasure was valued at under £3,000 ($3,800).

Mark Twain's Original Manuscript

In October 1990, Barbara Testa opened some steamer trucks which she had inherited in I961 from her grandfather, James Fraser Gluck, a Buffalo, New York, lawyer, who died in 1895. In one of the trunks she found the missing half of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" manuscript.

Gluck gave the 685-page manuscript to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library many years before, according to Testa and how he still had this manuscript in his possessions, when he died, is a mystery.

1938 Superman Comic in Wall of his new Home

A guy named David Gonzalez bought an abandoned house in Elbow Lake, Minnesota, which he planned to fix-up and sell. However, he made a bigger profit than he imagined, after he found a copy of Action Comics Number One, from 1938, featuring the first appearance of Superman, in the walls of his home. In 2013, the comic book sold for $175000.

Royal Wedding: Drunk and Bigamous

Before he became King George IV, George the Prince of Wales (1762 –1830) fell in love with the twice widowed, Maria Fitzherbert and they secretly married. The prince continued, however, to enjoy a luxurious and exorbitant lifestyle and he soon plunged into great debt.

George, Prince of Wales (1738-1820) 

Luckily, the truth of the prince's marriage was not known by the public, as it would have caused an immense scandal. But parliament did grant the prince £161,000 (equivalent to £18,450,000 today) to pay his debts.

Maria Anne Fitzherbert by Thomas Gainsborough, 1784

The prince continued to spend and his debts continued to escalate. Things became dire, but the prince's father, the king, would only assist his son, the prince, if he would marry his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick.

And so, the wedding was duly arranged and Princess Caroline arrived so richly dressed that she could hardly walk. The prince, however, arrived for his wedding day extremely drunk. The Prince of Wales then proceeded to become even more drunk, which meant that he spent his wedding night passed-out, in front of the fireplace, on the bedroom floor. In the early morning, the Prince managed to perform his conjugal duties, with the result that a daughter was born nine months later.

As to the Prince's marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, it was declared technically illegal, because he was the heir to the throne and she was Catholic.

Burning Money For Fun

On 23 August 1994, in a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty burnt £1,000,000 in cash.

The pair, who had formed an art foundation called the K Foundation, after they had retired from the music industry, decided that they wanted to do something extremely artistically subversive, so, they burned a million pounds in cash.

The money incinerating event was filmed on Super 8 by their friend Gimpo and a freelance journalist at the event wrote an article about it in The Observer.

The journalist, Jim Reid, said that at first, he felt shock and guilt about burning the money, but then, he simply became bored with the whole thing, as the money took well over an hour to burn, as Drummond and Cauty added £50 notes to the fire.

Later Drummond admitted that only about £900,000 of the money was actually burnt, as lots of the cash flew straight up the chimney. An honest islander, it was reported by the press, handed in £1,500 to the police.

The backlash, incredulity and anger that this burning of £1,000,000 provoked, showed very clearly how the destruction of money is perceived as a transgressive act by most people. According to the psychologist, Claudia Hammond, research shows that our brains respond to money as if it is a tool. This is why the burning of a load of printed paper gets people so riled up. Because we see the usefulness and potential of money and the loss of the money is a loss of potential.